September 30, 2002
THE CITY OF TAIPEI is home to more than 1 million college students, almost all non-Christians. (IMB Photos)
IT ONLY TAKES A SPARK:
A Texas volunteer in Taiwan
___TAIPEI, Taiwan--On a crowded college campus in Taipei, Jenny Matherne sits alone with her Bible, distracted only by the chemistry club practicing a cheerleading routine for a spirit competition.
___Her cell phone chirps, and a dozen kids sitting near her dive into their backpacks. Matherne confirms her location to her caller and stays on the phone until she makes eye contact with the two waving Chinese girls approaching across the commons.
___The three girls make their way to the cafeteria and find a table, where they begin to talk. Surrounded by the smoky smell of Chinese noodles and boiled meat dishes, melded with the clatter of conversation and the clipped chatter of chopsticks from the lunch crowd, the conversation turns to matters of eternal significance.
___No one around them knows that the young women are having church. This is "BodyLife"--a model of a rapidly reproducing student-led church.
___Matherne, a native ofColleyville and member of First Baptist Church in Hurst, serves in Taiwan through the Journeyman program of the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board.
A COLLEGE-AGED MAN worships at one of the larger temples in Taipei by performing "bai bai," the practice of burning incense to ancestors and spirits. (IMB Photo)
___As part of a team called Unbound Student Ministries, the 2000 Baylor University graduate works to facilitate a church-starting movement among more than 1 million college students in Taiwan. About 97 percent of them are non-Christian. Disenfranchised from traditional churches, most young people in Taiwan describe church as boring and irrelevant.
___Unbound Student Ministries takes its biblical mandate from John 11:44, where Jesus calls Lazarus from the tomb: "Unbind him and let him go."
___The ministry's goal is to plug students into small groups of no more than five or six other students.
___Everyone participates, and everyone is taught in BodyLife. Believers are taught through Scripture and are equipped to start their own BodyLife units, reaching more of their friends.
___Christian leaders believe this is an effective way to spark a rapidly reproducing student-led revival in Taiwan.
___Living in Taiwan has helped Matherne realize the need for the gospel to be shared with all people.
___"Nothing is more intense and heartbreaking than watching people spend hours at the temple praying to their ancestors, praying to gods made of gold and stone, reading random fortunes on pieces of paper and teaching their children to do the same," she said. "To watch the passing down of vanity in hopeless prayer from one generation to the next demands your body, soul and mind to do nothing more than kneel in prayer for these lives."
___Change will come about as God reveals himself to Taiwan's students, Matherne insisted.
___Tony, a new Taiwanese believer, arrived at BodyLife one evening looking emotionally drained and upset, Matherne recounted. His grandmother, who practically raised him, was sick and unconscious.
___"If Jesus can raise people from the dead, can he heal my grandmother?" Tony asked. "Yes," Matherne answered, and the group spent the rest of the night in prayer over the matter.
___The next day, Matherne said, Tony took a bus an hour and a half outside of Taipei to visit his grandmother. "He stood by herall day, holding her hand and praying over her. The next day, she opened her eyes, and the next week she was outside walking in the park."
JENNY Matherne uses a storying cloth with simple Bible illustrations to teach fundamental Bible stories to students at Dong Wu University in Taipei, Taiwan. She helps teach this group once a week. (IMB Photos).
___By answering Tony's prayer, God gave a young believer a powerful testimony "which Tony now shares boldly with his friends about the power behind the living God who he knows personally," Matherne said.
___Angela is another student whose life was radically transformed after professing faith in Jesus Christ.
___Like most Chinese students, Angela's family members are strict Buddhists and were adamantly opposed to her learning about Jesus.
___"Angela's father would put on CDs of Buddhist chanting in their living room, turned up really loud so Angela would be forced to listen to it," Matherne explained. "Angela would crank up (Christian) praise music in her room, and her brother--hating both--would blast rock music. It was a pretty loud house. But they began to back off of the pressure they were putting on her."
___Soon after becoming a Christian, Angela had read through the entire New Testament and about half of the Old Testament; she was sharing her faith with family and friends, and she kept everyone up to date when God answered her prayers.
___"She was constantly wanting to know tips on how to share her faith with others, especially to those she didn't know, since she had exhausted the list of her friends and family," Matherne explained.
___That, she said, is the very principle of what Unbound Student Ministries seeks to convey: "God speaks if we're willing to listen and obey."
___Radical obedience is a must for followers of Christ, Matherne said, adding that "Angela didn't know that most Christians don't normally read multiple books of the Bible in one week, or that not everyone immediately goes and tells everyone they know that they are now a follower of Christ."
___
The Baptist Standard
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